Brick Walls and Keeping Up Morale (Garlaon10N)

I am the guild leader and raid leader of a decent 10man group. My group got past the brick wall that is Elegon and now we're on our second brick wall, Garalon.

My first concern is keeping up the raid moral. For 3 hours each week (our first night each week is for farm content 6/6 MSV and 2/6 HoF) we have been bashing our faces against Garalon. Because of this, tension has been running high, people are getting snappy, and the raid morale has taken a sharp decline. I try to keep things light hearted, but in the heat of the moment, we have people yelling at each other, etc. Is there anything more I can do to keep this run FUN while still downing bosses?

The second question, would be for Garalon himself. We've tried several different strats. We've 2 tanked it/1 tanked it (plate dps soaking cleave), we've 2 healed it/3 healed it. We've done pheromone stacks to 20 and we've done them to 30. We've had all dps kite and then we've tried mixing dps and our plate healer kiting. This week, I think we'll try the tanks kiting.

Our group make-up (for those with no interest in logs): Blood DK, Brewmaster Monk, Resto shaman, Holy paladin, Demo lock (me), Windwalker monk, 2 Fire mages, and a Survival Hunter. The 10th spot varies...sometimes it's another hunter, sometimes it's a dps dk, sometimes it's a warrior, sometimes a shadow priest. But we usually have all buffs.

These are our logs from the week before last (I was unable to attend last week and I'm the one that runs logs, it's only half the raid because I DC'd and forgot to turn them back on). Here we were 2 healing, 3 dps kiting. Other than our major mess up (I didn't realize there had to be 4 kiters, lol), does anyone see anything fundamentally wrong? http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-lei4tyz46cqsg3c1/

TL;DR - How can I keep raid morale up during wipefests? Any tips or tricks on Garalon? What strat did your group use to down him?

Any advice will be greatly appreciated and thank you soooo so much in advance!

Try going to Terrace and working on Protectors. It's very easy if you're not going for Elite. Clearing farm first can also help a bit.

As for Garalon, it looks like you'll need to keep to two healers with your DPS. For our first normal kill, we used two tanks, but on heroic, we use a tank and a Ret Pally to soak, so either way will work. The DPS tank will only do marginally more DPS than he would in a tank spec anyway, so it barely matters.

Make sure none of the DPS are in the rotation at the start and burn lust there so they can hit the boss hard with all their cooldowns.

Only put certain DPS (I'd recommend the Fire Mages if they know what they're doing, and melee) on the legs, and have the other DPS switch to them only when the boss starts getting low, or when more than one leg is up at a time. Ranged should just burn boss.

Put DPS that can attack while moving in the soaking order. Your Hunter, Lock to a lesser extent, healers if you can afford to.

Don't go to 20 or 30 stacks. That's just dumb. We go to 15 with no issue on normal. BoP healers during Crushes if people are particularly low.

BTW, you should ABSOLUTELY have the tanks kiting...I just scanned over your post again and noticed you said you'll only just try it this week. You absolutely HAVE to have them kite. There's zero reason not to. They're tanky, have cooldowns, take next to no damage from the boss, and have a huge amount of space to move around that no one else in the raid without a death wish will go to.

Try going to Terrace and working on Protectors. It's very easy if you're not going for Elite. Clearing farm first can also help a bit.

As for Garalon, it looks like you'll need to keep to two healers with your DPS. For our first normal kill, we used two tanks, but on heroic, we use a tank and a Ret Pally to soak, so either way will work. The DPS tank will only do marginally more DPS than he would in a tank spec anyway, so it barely matters.

Make sure none of the DPS are in the rotation at the start and burn lust there so they can hit the boss hard with all their cooldowns.

Only put certain DPS (I'd recommend the Fire Mages if they know what they're doing, and melee) on the legs, and have the other DPS switch to them only when the boss starts getting low, or when more than one leg is up at a time. Ranged should just burn boss.

Put DPS that can attack while moving in the soaking order. Your Hunter, Lock to a lesser extent, healers if you can afford to.

Don't go to 20 or 30 stacks. That's just dumb. We go to 15 with no issue on normal. BoP healers during Crushes if people are particularly low.

BTW, you should ABSOLUTELY have the tanks kiting...I just scanned over your post again and noticed you said you'll only just try it this week. You absolutely HAVE to have them kite. There's zero reason not to. They're tanky, have cooldowns, take next to no damage from the boss, and have a huge amount of space to move around that no one else in the raid without a death wish will go to.

You need to clear HoF to enter Terrace.

Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.So I chose the path of the Ebon Blade, and not a day passes where i've regretted it.I am eternal, I am unyielding, I am UNDYING.I am Zethras, and my blood will be the end of you.

as for morale, we try to keep it light, however when frustration levels are high for us, there is a rule that only me can get angry. this basically means that outside constructive criticism there is no name calling, causing drama, or as you mentioned yelling - for that you might get yourself benched or kicked

after the second night of wiping i did a post on the forum saying that fun times are over and it is time to suck it up, step up, kill the boss and move to more interesting encounters - not saying that this helped but people came much more prepared, sporting max food, prepotting and double potting on each pulls and we got it on third night

regarding the strategy:

we use two tanks (prot paladin and prot warrior) - warrior goes DPS and soaks swipes with me (pally)

we use three healers (disc priest, resto druid and resto shammy)

we use both tanks and two healers to kite pheromones

when tanks are kiting the one with debuff stays outside of melee but still in hit zone of the swipes, when healers are kiting they are further away from the boss

our prot warrior who goes dps on this fight - when having the debuff - goes in defence stance and switches to 1h + shield for extra dmg reduction

we take around 20 stacks each

with that number of crushes we can ensure that 3min healer cooldowns are up after 4 crushes - this means we do assignments which cooldowns are used on which crushes ensuring we are covered on everyone (we keep couple for "oh shit" crushes - but that doesn't and shouldn't happen)

as for dps - we have melee on legs rest on boss

we blow hero on the pull and kill as many legs as possible and after that we focus on the two legs that are on the inside part of the boss (front and back legs closes to center)

looking at your WoL - you are not hitting enrage yet. this means that either you wipe to stupid screw ups or general panic mode ensues. focus on this first, even with enraging with boss on 30% then focus on optimizing DPS. for us when we first got to enrage it was 30% health, pull after that it was 16% and pull after that it was 8% - when panic mode stops dps goes higher. after that we started optimizing dps (we use resto druid's HoTW for extra dps on the pull and such) and got him down.

try to get one person in your raid to pug the rest of hof after your last raid night, then start terrace progress. this is what we did when garalon bent us over. great relief to see new bosses, and terrace is easier than hof imo.

Keep at it. The most important thing you can do right now is get a second melee to help your monk...the warrior would be good for cleave purposes...hunters aren't terrible at legs because they can cast while moving but an actual melee dps will still probably be better.

It doesn't matter too much who kites...we have a mix of people do it, including a healer, ranged dps, and a tank, as long as the dps can still attack the boss, it shouldn't be much of a dps loss (would thus recommend hunters/locks as kiters). All the other dps have to do is sit there with their thumb up their asses, don't step in the red circle and nuke the boss to oblivion. 50k or even 60k is atrocious, doing 70k is not unreasonable with the gear people have and as long as you have people doing 90k+ like you do (notably the people on the legs), you'll be okay unless people drop dead. It's a gimmicky fight that certainly favors cleavers but now that the enrage is seven minutes, the dps requirements are really quite generous.

well garalon is the fight that melee really shine, we do ridiculous damage cleave and circle wise, you have a serious lack of melee for a start, it is costing you a lot, i have done it on my alt (frost dk), with two heals and me as the only melee, but if i dont do 120k (at least) it is a wipe, randomly if you have a couple of melee offspecs it will help this fight no end, in my main group we were able to 3 heal it on our first kill as we had two good cleaving melee

How we do it is have our maintank (druid) and our rogue soak the shockwaves infront of the boss (since rogues have the aoe reduce thingy), and killing the front legs at the same time. We have me (ww monk) a frost dk and 2 warriors on the legs. We normally use our disc priest, shadowpriest, pally healer and our mage to kite the pheromones. At the start we tried 3 healing the fight, but enrage was an issue for us, so we just switched to two, and the damage doesent seem too bad.

This also has an enrage and I think they will also hit the enrage there if they can't push garalon over within the enrage. Elite mode is pretty easy on normal (at least for us - think we had about 3 tries )

This also has an enrage and I think they will also hit the enrage there if they can't push garalon over within the enrage. Elite mode is pretty easy on normal (at least for us - think we had about 3 tries )

Seeing as there isnt a need for high movement and cordination for protectors, enrage shouldnt be a problem. Downed elite protectors after three wipes with 2 people dead from 80% - 0% of the last guy. Think we had about 20 secs left on enrage.

One thing I did notice looking through a few of those wipes is that some of your dps have pretty low uptime %'s on the boss. I'm sure some of that may be caused by early deaths but if you look at DPS versus DPS(e) you'll see what I mean. Basically the first number is around the dps they would be doing with 100% uptime, while the 2nd number shows what they are actually doing. Just try to emphasize everyone to always be attacking, for example, target the body immediately after killing a leg and keep attacking that while moving on to the next leg. You gotta have the other mechanics down first but better uptime can make the difference from a 5% wipe and a kill.

We only just killed it last week after having a rough time on him as well. I can hopefully give you some insight or thoughts. And trust me, I tried A LOT of different tactics...

Furious Swipes:
I'd suggest taking 2 tanks to do this. They take less damage than dps, so you can 2-heal.
Pheromones:
Tanks kite, period. Then take the 2 people who can dps the best while on the move. We used ele shaman + hunter.
We swapped on 18-22, preferably no more.
Healers:
I can only suggest bringing a Disc priest. We also had a holy paladin. I think any healers can do it.
Dps:
If an "inner" leg is up everyone get into the buff circle and kills it. If it's an "outer" leg ranged will dot/focus it, no one moves there (out of healing range, pools).

Our first wipes due to enrage were on 30%, not very motivating. But I've seen people need to get used to the fight and they'll improve their dps quite a lot. We managed to kill it - messy - with 8 seconds left to enrage. Kiters were pulling 50-60k, tanks 20k.

As for motivation... Tell them the Wind Lord is the easy. And yeah, you should be the only one doing any sort of calling out when people underperform. Not anyone else.

we do it with uhm i guess 2 healers 2 tanks, and those 4 kite, our dps just do dmg... not sure if we sometimes use 3 healers... we have 2 melee, 1 dk 1 rogue, the rangend only kill the farthest leg away from the melees, those 2 only kill the inner legs..

Originally Posted by ash

So, look um, I'm not a grief counselor, but if it's any consolation, I have had to kill and bury loved ones before.

as for morale, we try to keep it light, however when frustration levels are high for us, there is a rule that only me can get angry. this basically means that outside constructive criticism there is no name calling, causing drama, or as you mentioned yelling - for that you might get yourself benched or kicked

after the second night of wiping i did a post on the forum saying that fun times are over and it is time to suck it up, step up, kill the boss and move to more interesting encounters - not saying that this helped but people came much more prepared, sporting max food, prepotting and double potting on each pulls and we got it on third night

regarding the strategy:

we use two tanks (prot paladin and prot warrior) - warrior goes DPS and soaks swipes with me (pally)

we use three healers (disc priest, resto druid and resto shammy)

we use both tanks and two healers to kite pheromones

when tanks are kiting the one with debuff stays outside of melee but still in hit zone of the swipes, when healers are kiting they are further away from the boss

our prot warrior who goes dps on this fight - when having the debuff - goes in defence stance and switches to 1h + shield for extra dmg reduction

we take around 20 stacks each

with that number of crushes we can ensure that 3min healer cooldowns are up after 4 crushes - this means we do assignments which cooldowns are used on which crushes ensuring we are covered on everyone (we keep couple for "oh shit" crushes - but that doesn't and shouldn't happen)

as for dps - we have melee on legs rest on boss

we blow hero on the pull and kill as many legs as possible and after that we focus on the two legs that are on the inside part of the boss (front and back legs closes to center)

looking at your WoL - you are not hitting enrage yet. this means that either you wipe to stupid screw ups or general panic mode ensues. focus on this first, even with enraging with boss on 30% then focus on optimizing DPS. for us when we first got to enrage it was 30% health, pull after that it was 16% and pull after that it was 8% - when panic mode stops dps goes higher. after that we started optimizing dps (we use resto druid's HoTW for extra dps on the pull and such) and got him down.

I'd like to echo this post.
We use the same 2tanks, 3heals setup and have the tanks and two healers do the kiting. Like he says, you are dying before the enrage so for now you should focus on surviving until the enrage, and only then, you will be able to tune your strat to get the amount of DPS you lack. a few pointers that really helped us:

-With 4 kiters, you should be able to swap pheromones around ~20stacks (a bit before that, like 17-19)
-Go for a Tank-Healer-Tank-Healer rotation on your kiters, so that you never have to pass the pheromone from one healer to another, this way you always have two healers fully operational when a crush occurs.
-Rotating defensive raid cooldowns on the crushes is the key to avoir random deaths when you're stunned. Have one person call out which ones will be used on each crush.

This should keep you alive until the enrage hits. If you are having troubles with dps after that, Remeber that it doesnt matter how fast you kill the legs (past the initial 4) as long as you kill them faster than they spawn. Assign two persons, (preferably melees, hunters are fine as well) to them, have the rest just blast the boss and only switch if a leg is out of reach of the melee dps.

In general, you should really clear Heart of Fear yourselves before considering Terrace. Going terrace, meaning you as the leader get an Empress kill and thus enabling Terrace, is just an expression of giving up. From one leader to another, don't do that. Kill this giant bug and clear your way to the Empress with your guild and then, with all 'pride' you can enter Terrace yourselves, which will pose a different and more comfortable raid compared to Heart of Fear.

We are on 16/16nh and 2/6 MV (started Heroics 2 ID's ago, Gara'jal and Elegon will have their first HC-tries today or Monday), and Garalon caused the most wipes to us; until we finally found the right way to defeat him. Since then, he's downed in the first pull each lockout.

I'll list your setup and try to convert your tactic to ours:

Blood DK:
Pheromone kiter #1, if he pulls the boss. Walk slowly backwards, and very important: before turning to the left corner you must have a small area on the ground without any pheromone trails on it. This is for the future kiters, to move through safely. Stay away from the Monk but eat the Swipe together.
When pheromones passed to the Brewmaster, always punch the front legs while staying at the inner side of the circle. (read more below)
But always try to hit the legs with the dmg-bonus, even when kiting.

Brewmaster:
Pheromone kiter #2, free to take from the DK after 17-18 stacks. He can wait for the next cleave or get the pheromones before. If he gets them before the Swipe, Garalon will use Crush instead of Cleaving again. Time Guard always for the Crush and for Swipes. Stay away from the DK, damage the legs (!). Stay on the inner side of the green circle; Swipe will hit him and he can continue to damage the front leg - very important for the tanks.

Resto shaman:
Pheromone kiter #4, right after the hunter. Read how to kite at the hunter description below. Stay out of the Cleave!
After about 20 secs and after a Swipe (meaning the tank does not have to soak Swipe in the next few seconds), the DK will move to him and take the pheromones.
Place healing rain where the range camp is, always.

Holy paladin:
Aura of Devotion is useless on Crush. Use regularly when pheromones go past 15. Speak with the shaman about who takes care of the kiter and the soakers.
Hand of Purity on the kiter when stacks are high. Protection on cloth when Crush happens. Cooldowns are there for using them.

Demo lock (you):
Position yourself as close to the center as possible. Burst & Heroism/BL right at the start. You will want to kill the two front legs first ASAP.
Only move to the legs when the 'inner legs' are here. Do NOT move to the outer legs. Instead, just focus the body of Garalon. Very important. Melees take the biggest advantage out of the legs, so if you have to move more than about 3 secs to a leg, just stay where you are and nuke the body.

Windwalker:
He got a very important role here, as he's a melee. His target is to get to every leg if possible! Use roll, Serpent Kick (if careful), just get there ASAP. Careful if he has to move to a front leg if a tank has pheromones or if a Swipe is incoming. An accidental pheromone transfer is very bad.
Nuke the shit out the legs (when it's freshly spawned).

Fire Mage 1:
Has exact the same to do as the warlock (you). If you have healing concerns, he or Fire Mage 2 can be the 4th kiter. But you will lose 'some' damage then.

Fire Mage 2:
See above.

Survival Hunter:
Pheromone kiter #3. Move towards the DK at about 14-15 stacks, watch out to stay at the necessary range so he does not eat the cleave. At nearly 20 stacks and right after a Swipe, move to the tank, get the pheromones, and Disengage/run back. Kite on, slowly.. Place a trail, then move slightly left or right, place another one, and THEN, move back a little bit. Don't get EVER cleaved! When nearly to 20 stacks, get ready to NOT stand in a trail when kiter #4 needs to take the debuff and stop moving until the pheromones pass on.

Last slot:
If it's a melee, check the Windwalker section. If it's a hunter, he should be the 4th kiter. If it's another range, look at the warlock section.

In general:
You have Cooldowns for using them. Personal cooldowns for Crush, best shortly before the kiter changes. So you mitigate some pheromone damage AND the crush with only one defensive cooldown.
Pally and Shaman coordinate Cooldowns for Crush. Healing tide, Ascendance, Wings/Avenger and so on. They need to speak with each other.

This is the way which was our key to victory and we follow it since then.